antreegonist | [IT'S MEME TIME AGAIN]

SO WHAT ABOUT THAT ESSAY.

This is only sort of an SOTU! It's more expounding on some aspects of Mithos that haven't been very obvious in play before but have definitely started coming up after the Anna memory. It's also more random pointform than coherent essay because look at how many essays I have already written all over this meme, oh my god.

- I have said repeatedly that Mithos's relationships all feel torpedoed by the Anna memory! Everything is shifting and uncomfortable; either people know what he did and they both have to struggle with a brick of awareness re: the duality of the relationship (Mithos being a friend, who is also quite an awful criminal), or the other person doesn't know but it's still a giant lump RIGHT THERE that he has to work around somehow. In the conversations where he's reestablished connections he's realized that he shoves a lot of crap at his close friends but often doesn't know what's going on with them and what's been stressing them out, as well. Feels...feels bad!

- He's only slowly been able to move around to the fact that the crimes he talks to people about and tries to make them understand are treated more lightly than they should be just because the scale of them is so, so, so enormous they're not properly conceivable anymore. Eventually he'll figure out that the only reason he and Lloyd can comprehend the scale of the crimes realistically is because they build on their perceptions and experience of it memory by memory by memory, incident by incident by individual incident. I am not sure if this will lead him to stop trying to share the information altogether with people who haven't lived it, since it's really really hard and he's gotten really really burned . . . or if he will start asking people who want to know if they're willing to look at a few of his memories to go with the explanation, to remove that problem. It's just not going to stay as it is, since what is happening right now is viciously cyclical: people can't comprehend it so they try to swing focus around to the 'make friend feel better' side of things too fast; Mithos feels hurt and angry and like his actions are being taken too lightly in response to that; and then it goes around again.

- Along with the cyclical thing a thing also happens where people often try to offer him advice for how to move past it, which is a bit upsetting to him too! Because often he has made similar resolutions already well before they bring it up – he really just needs time to get over himself. He feels really bad about getting irritated at it, though; it's not like he doesn't appreciate the attempt to help, and he doesn't know how to articulate that he doesn't need to hear those things without sounding arrogant.

- What he really needs right now from his relationships is people to not necessarily smack him around for what he did – because goodness knows he smacks himself around plenty, and it's a bit hopeless because there's not a lot that can be done about a lot of it -- but to listen. He needs people to be able to let him know they're offering sympathy to a friend who is hurting and condemnation to a person who committed atrocities; mixing the two up has made him fairly kneejerk mad a couple of times already. He generally seems to be going somewhere less passive in his relationships as he confronts them again, because he's Not Comfortable until that dual dynamic is made clear at some point and he's willing to fight hard for it until it is. And once the firmer pattern has been established, it feels like it IS helping his CR in general, or will -- there are certain things he gets from each relationship that he is more willing to reach out for openly, and certain things the other person gets from him that he is also more willing to offer openly.

- A random note on the differences between Mithos and Lloyd – I think the way they approach situations is affected by how they structure their principles. Mithos has more 'give' in a way in that...to use some big awkward metaphors, I think Lloyd's principles have been described as unshakeable pillars before, whereas Mithos's are immovable lines in the earth. He has a limit to what he finds 'acceptable' but below that limit he has room to move around and make allowances; that may have something to do with why he seems less actively/directly pushy on the whole than Lloyd.

- The angry dangershark part of him has been slamming its way back into play with a vengeance, when previously it only came up a few times and was very tightly regulated/swallowed. I talked about it pretty in-depth in the Guy essay down below '^'b It is a big change!

- Difficulty confronting teams, difficulty seeking out people! I was having a lot of OOC play difficulties that did stem from IC ones! A lot of his CR has gotten stalled because he has been having trouble not being avoidant. He's only now starting to work around to getting his relationships back together and finding new comfortable places to stand in the wake of the torturecamps memory. Interactions with people who don't really know him have been going on as usual and are fine, because often the other party isn't close enough to tell the undercurrents of distress are happening. Interactions with his closest CR are just beginning to kick off again and are fairly tentative/uncertain, very 'where do we go from here?' Aaand interaction with CR in between those two categories has been more or less on hold because it tends to be the trickiest for him to balance; he knows he'll be off his socializing game with those people and he doesn't know them quite well enough to tell if he'll inadvertently upset them with the off behavior or not. Obviously that state of affairs can't last since he can't avoid everyone forever and isn't the type – I think I'm enjoying threading again partly because Mithos is ready to socialize again – but that's what's been going on.

I...I HAVE TAGGED EVERY COMMENT TO A QUESTIONMEME, GOSH!

How do you think Lloyd would react to a bodyswitch with Mithos :|a

Uhh badly. Though it isn't particularly personal to Mithos! Obviously there's the OH GOD EXSPHERE stuff and the OH GOD MANASENSE stuff which are things he wouldn't be equipped to deal with (one of them a horrible ping) specific to Mithos's body, but in general not being in his own body would be a bad experience for Lloyd. Even animal transformation games make him just a little uneasy, and he can enjoy them only because it is his body which is transformed. Depending on what else was going on he'd handle it with varying levels of grace and coping but at a very basic level it'd be arghnowrong.

Would Mithos be okay with bodyswitches?

NOPE. He would never feel 'not himself' in someone else's body personally, because he's always pretty centered in who he is no matter what form he takes/shape he gets shunted to. But that would be the only part that didn't feel wrong! Knowing someone else has to deal with his Exsphere problem and manasense is awful. Having someone uninvolved learn about the Exsphere problem by experiencing it firsthand is awful. Potentially seeing someone get the screaming jeebies over parts of who he is is awful. He would still be getting a lot of horrible pings despite being physically disconnected from the prompters but be obliged to stick it out and stay with the unfortunate recipient of his body to coach them through it.

Bodyswitching could also wind up pinging off memory things like shoving Martel into Colette and trying to possess Lloyd and possessing Colette/dying/failing to keep a grip on her, so he'll just be less and less okay with it as time passes.

Lloyd's ideal vacation spot!

Yeah, I wouldn't describe Lloyd's discomfort as "not feeling like himself" precisely but. Noooo.

Altamira |D

Mithos's top five... flopping spots.

- on Lloyd/on other people who let him get away with it.
- their bed or couch.
- the beach -- though he likes rolling with the movement of the shadows, staying out of the glare of the sun but keeping on sand that's super warmed through.
- on top of Admiral.
- pretty much anything if he is a kitten.

We talk about food a lot but does Lloyd have any favorite drinks? Alcoholic or otherwise.

Sterling in general — or at least Lloyd and Guy, when they do this — seem to be the GET DRUNK ON A CHEAP BOTTLE OF WINE type of alcohol drinkers. Lloyd himself is actually really fond of iced tea and lemonade, I think! He wouldn't drink hard versions of those when he wanted to get drunk, though, because he would have a sneaking suspicion Knife would judge him.

Something Mithos will never tell anyone?

That sometimes, in his blackest moods, he contemplates finishing up Aather by doing something along the lines of 'go to a world where no one knows me, permanently destroy all memories of Aselia.' It's never a serious thing and it's not something that would ever work out; he has a million reasons to never do it. It's just one of those illogical self-flagellating daymares.

Reverse for Lloyd.

That some part of him really wasn't okay with Kratos fucking off and never will be. Abandoned puppy in the rainnnn. It'll just be solidified by getting the memory of Kratos leaving for good eventually! People can probably guess this is true but he will never say it, at least not without a dismissive qualifier of "but we had our own stuff to do so it's fine."

. . . if Mithos could make one change in his past, what would he change?

. . . no i can't

pick a different question

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Mithos versus Disneyland. Describe.

MITHOS DOESN'T BELIEVE IN DIRECTLY CHANGING THE PAST AS IT EXISTS OKAY /o\ IT DOESN'T WORK THAT SIMPLY AAA /can of worms flies open

Mithos basically owns every one of the death rollercoasters and thrill rides and is like WHEEEEEEEEE and eats junk food and runs off ahead and TRIES TO WIN THE FATTEST STUFFED TOYS TO GIVE TO PEOPLE ////// He has a blast.

Idle thoughts: how do you think Toothless would work out in Aather?

I've thought about it actually, because I do love playing dragons and he has a fairly self-contained arc. I'd probably start him out with a lot of fear/distrust/distaste for humans and have him work through some of his trust issues into tsundere, then hopefully have him struggle with practicality versus looking at people as not something to kill some more before reaching some kind of satisfactory conclusion.

The problem is character attachments and setting! I'd feel bad taking him away from Hiccup, and things that I feel are really necessary to maintain his character as it existed in the movie and I would want to play it — his tail needing Hiccup's help to operate, for one, and his muteness, for another — are things that would probably be negated by Aather. I could always ask the Personae not to be able to provide any of his team's communication requests and we could probably work it out but it's a complication on top of the first one, which really gets to me.

If we wanted to play Mithos and Lloyd at Thusia, how would they die?

I really do wish 'old age' was a valid reason.

I am going to say CATASTROPHE: METEOR CAME DURING LLOYD'S LIFETIME AND BROUGHT ALL ITS FRIENDS WITH IT and then Lloyd and Mithos burned themselves out repelling an entire swarm of meteors off Aselia and creating some sort of permanent safeguard against future space threats.

As far as unfortunate early deaths go it was pretty awesome.

Do you have a possible alt answer for that one :Oa

Me too. And no ._______. ALAS THAT I DO NOT

Tell me about a Mithos in Temeraireverse AU.

. . . this is easy, he would pretty much be King Mokhachane except crazier and with a lot of bitterness over some sort of botching of the ancestor-to-egg ritual. Something something his people would keep trying but in his insanity he would continually find something wrong/off with the hatchling who was 'born' as Martel. I don't think actual killing of the hatchlings would happen -- this is a much less self-destructively bloody version of Mithos overall, because he is under the eye of his people more -- but there'd be a lot of spiritual/emotional wrongness going on on a personal level and on a broader level he would of course be running the war against Europeans.

TELL ME ABOUT LLOYD . . . IN ONE PIECE UNIVERSE

He'd be Luffy and then decide to overthrow the World Government.

Three things you hoped Mithos would do in Aather when you apped him, versus three things you hope he'll do in the future now.

Beginning hopes: that he'd go nuts and flip out in some way, that he'd be friends with Lloyd, that he'd wrench around so hard he defined himself with 'healer knight' the strongest part of his general identity.

Future hopes: that he'll go nuts and flip out in some way that accomplishes something awesome, that he will in fact find a way to break the hold of the Exsphere and start growing up again, that he'll reach some sort of equilibrium with Ratatosk after the reveal is made.

Lloyd's themes if he were a Persona :|a hopefully that is easier than asking for his specific fairytale like last time.

Determination and the will/confidence to keep pushing through things till they suit your own vision! He'd have patronned people like Elliot and Riful.

Reverse!

Similar, except with more of a focus on strong internal duality of natures in some way :|a Physical, moral or philosophical dichotomy. He would wind up patronning people like Sion or Yuri if they didn't wander into Onyx's arms first.

AATHER GETS ACCESS TO THE INTERNET, WHAT WEBSITES WOULD LLOYD ACCESS REGULARLY

Etsy.

If Mithos had the opportunity of making Kiriko's bone manipulation favor permanent, would he take it?

It...probably depends a lot on context and what more is revealed about the nature of the knight role / why only Sterling knights can individually contract with Personae / what the reason was for the opportunity to be offered / etc. Mithos does have a suspicion ICly that a knight who is not perma-allied with any one Persona will have a lot more general leverage in big picture terms than one who is, so that'd have bearing on his decision too.

Something Lloyd would like to ask Firebird about if she hung around long enough to have a good conversation.

Edited 2012-03-12 20:22 (UTC)

Who she remembers trapping her in the past!

Your favorite object to symbolize Mithos! Like — you'd be pleased to see him represented as that thing in other peoples' heartgames. Hard mode: not a tree.

First aid kit or similar :|a Stuffed animal maybe since he's given some of those to people. H-he'd be really touched to go in an Emerald member's heart and see himself indicated as part of the team no matter the form, also. IC/OOC preferences towards him being represented in 'safe' forms as opposed to weapons/other dangerous forms.

Rrreverse? Hard mode: not two swords.

Some kind of craft object! :U Preferably something he'd made someone.

What exactly was it that made Mithos stop being dependent on Lloyd being around to sleep? Was there a particular catalyst or was it just a thing.

[IT'S MEME TIME AGAIN]

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